In examining the characteristics of these companies, we eliminated retail workers from the sample:

Some of the large tech companies examined have a substantial retail presence (e.g., Apple, Microsoft, etc.). For this reason, we eliminated retail workers and retail managers from our sample to keep the data focused on corporate employees. But we did not only limit the sample to just IT workers; it takes more than IT to make a business run, so we included workers in job types such as marketing, administration, finance, etc.

“The benefits of working for a tech firm are not just relegated to high pay and free soda. Depending on the firm, workers may experience ample opportunities for learning and development (e.g., Google and Apple), believe they are making the world a better place (e.g., SpaceX and Tesla), or experience very high job satisfaction (e.g., Facebook). The opportunities for these qualitative benefits are spread across employees at these firms and not just reserved for tech employees,” said Katie Bardaro, Lead Economist, PayScale.

The report's highlights include:

Workers at tech companies are overwhelmingly young and male. Seven of the 18 companies we compared have a median employee age of 30 or younger, and ten have workforces with less than 30 percent female employees.

Although the employees at Elon Musk’s companies (SpaceX and Tesla) are among the lowest paid and most stressed out in the tech industry, they believe, much more than employees at other tech companies in this report, that their job has meaning. Ninety-two percent of tech employees at SpaceX believe their job makes the world a better place, followed by 89 percent at Tesla. On average, 57% of employees employed by the companies in this report believe their job has meaning.

The employees at Facebook are among the best paid in the tech industry, with both early and mid-career employees earning over 100K. Almost all employees report high job satisfaction (96 percent), and about three quarters (78 percent) report that their job has meaning. The stress levels at Facebook are the lowest among all the tech companies in our report, with only 44 percent reporting high job stress.

The highest-paid early career employees (0-5 years experience) do work at Facebook, but experienced (10 or more years) employees at LinkedIn earn the highest overall median salaries ($159,600).

Employees at the more established tech companies report longer tenures with their current employers – IBM, HP, Oracle, and Intel are the only companies where the median employee tenure is five years or more.

Companies at which the typical employee has spent two years or less, like Facebook (1.1 years), Tesla (1.6 years), Salesforce (1.8 years), Google (2.0 years) and Amazon (2.0 years) are also those that have grown most rapidly in recent years.

Adds Bardaro: “When it comes to wages at tech firms, they are not only some of the highest among professional workers, but also have experienced some of the strongest wage growth in recent years. As the demand for tech employees surges in our economy, this wage growth is not likely to slow down anytime soon.”

About PayScale

Cloud software, crowd sourced data and unique algorithms power the world’s largest real-time database of rich salary profiles giving PayScale the unique ability to provide employees and employers alike immediate visibility into the right pay for any position. PayScale’s cloud compensation software is used by more than 3,000 customers including Bloomberg BNA, Cummins, Warby Parker, Clemson University and Signature HealthCARE.